Seated opposite me in the small & unique house she rented in Park City, Julia snapped this picture this morning and sent it out to the family.

"This is what old codgers do on their birthday," she said.

As the sun rose over the town earlier, Ken texted me to ask if I'd hit 50. Knowing I'd not, yet not entirely sure of my age, I checked with Google.

As mundane as it seems today, the entire concept of a Google search is remarkable. Can you imagine the reaction of the doctor, the nurses, or anyone else present in the delivery room of Union Memorial Hospital on the morning of January 31, 1976, had you proclaimed the following:

"By the time this child reaches the middle of his life, most humans will carry computers in their pockets more powerful than those aboard the Apollo spacecraft. With them, they will regularly make video calls to one another, play chess with opponents halfway across the world, and order any food they choose to eat only to have it delivered, hot and fresh, within the hour."

The people in that room may well have thought you insane or at least dismissed you as having an overly active imagination. Yet, here I am, asking Google how old I am.

47, by the way.

An ongoing argument I have with my good friend Steven is whether or not our grandchildren will ever know the pleasure of driving a car. My position is that only a privileged few will. The masses, at that point, will pass through life in vehicles that drive themselves.

Far fetched?

I don't think so, and if you do, I suggest an imaginary conversation with the Wright Brothers about the most recent iteration of the SpaceX Falcon rockets.

Things are getting pretty wild out there.

I've often thought I was born in the wrong generation. That I would have been better off in the Old West exploring the country via wagon and horseback rather than airplane and Uber.

Many days I lament the rise of technology.

On occasion, I've been known to rant about how it's destroying our species.

Yet, here I am on a trip that would have been - quite literally - impossible without such technology. I arrived in Utah by jet airplane, traveled to Park City in an electric car, and stayed at a house belonging to people I've never met who provided access with a digital key.

We arranged all this with the computer in my pocket, and it's all as mundane as a Google Search.

That is until you take a moment to think about it from the perspective of the people in the room the day I was born. There's no way it would have been anything other than inconceivable.

And the faster we go, the faster we go. Things are changing so fast that we don't even realize it. In my children's lifetime, if not my own, we will see the maturity of artificial intelligence.

In the news this morning, Alleyn's School, a day school in the UK, announced that homework was obsolete. Their reason?

ChatGPT by OpenAI.

If you don't believe me when I say things are getting pretty wild out there, head over to openai.com and give it a try. While writing this, I asked it to write a pop song about the beauty of skiing in Utah. It took less than a minute for the words to appear, and I've pasted them below for your reading pleasure.

The word amazing does not adequately describe this.

And that gets back to my position that my grandchildren won't drive cars.

It seems hard to imagine.

But we imagine the future through the lens of preconceived notions. That is, it's hard for us to imagine what we've not yet seen.

But technology does not abide such silly notions. Already, computers are writing new computer programs. We're only a very short time from asking AI to deliver things much more complex than Justin Beiber's next hit.

And when computers reach the point of thinking for themselves, we will have reached a new tipping point, and life as we know it will change in ways we cannot envision today.

In the end, I have no idea where we're going, but I'm confident of one thing: we're going to get there at a speed exponentially faster than we can comprehend today.

In the meantime, I find that sitting on a couch looking out the windows of a mountain home, past four-foot tall snowdrifts, while reading a book about a man whose ability to stand was taken from him by a shaman with a pyramid-shaped head is a delightful way to spend the day.

Thanks for all the birthday wishes, y'all. It's a great time to be alive. If things don't get too crazy, that will be the case for a few more years.

BTW, here's that song that ChatGPT wrote in less than a minute:

Utah Ski Beauty by ChatGPT

Verse 1:

Ski down the slopes, feeling so alive

Utah's mountains, a winter wonderland in sight

Snowflakes falling, the air so crisp

Skiing in Utah, a beauty not to miss

Chorus:

Skiing in Utah, oh what a sight

The beauty of the mountains, an endless white

Riding the lifts, feeling free

The joy of skiing, a blissful release

Verse 2:

Gliding through the snow, surrounded by peace

The quiet of the mountains, a sweet release

The sun shining down, a warm embrace

Skiing in Utah, a special place

Chorus:

Skiing in Utah, oh what a sight

The beauty of the mountains, an endless white

Riding the lifts, feeling free

The joy of skiing, a blissful release

Bridge:

So come on and ski, and feel alive

The beauty of Utah, a breathtaking sight

Take in the view, as you glide down the hill

Skiing in Utah, an unforgettable thrill

Chorus:

Skiing in Utah, oh what a sight

The beauty of the mountains, an endless white

Riding the lifts, feeling free

The joy of skiing, a blissful release.